How does natural selection explain adaptations? For example, if the environment changed to favor pink beetles rather than brown beetles, where would pink beetles come from?
Adaptations result from natural selection. In a population of organisms, individuals in the population are diverse in most if not all traits – one of Darwin’s observations. Thus, in your proposition, the beetle population would include beetles that ranged in color from, say light tan to purple. The pinkish tan would be more likely to escape predation possibly than the other color morphs. Each generation more and more of the members of the population would be pinkish (the color that has adaptive value in your example). You might wonder why the population doesn’t become only pink – the perfect color. Two things are at work 1)the environment also is changing over time. Thus, 1,000 years later, natural selection may no longer favor the pink morph. Nature is constantly “editing”. 2) Diversity continues to be reintroduced in the population each generation through genetic recombination in sexual reproduction and mutation. On the other hand, if the color range was from light tan to black and n
